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The folks who cross America and the world to Buffett's home town of Omaha are a cross-section of nice old rich people, bored old rich people and young rich people acting old.

Woodstock? Revenge of the Nerds sponsored by Saga would be more like it. For being rich enough to own even a single Berkshire Hathaway share (about $70,000 each) the investors get free cheese on a stick and a chance to buy things sold by Berkshire firms (jewellery, chocolates, T-shirts) at preferential rates.

It all looks like the kind of stuff the parsimonious Buffett would regard as a waste of money, so the capitalism is only going one way. The entrepreneurs and the wannabees come to ask Buffett how he got so rich. "I sell junk to you lot" is an answer he does not give.

The millionaires who gather to celebrate their own wealth in a way their hero never would miss several ironies. One is that Buffett probably disapproves of some of them. The Omaha Oracle doesn't like ostentatious displays of money, he doesn't like inherited wealth (ask his children) and he doesn't like people getting rich by accident.

Buffett doesn't think his followers should feel bad for being lucky enough to have bought some shares that went up. I doubt he thinks that they are entitled to feel all that good about it either.

Issues of birth

At the age of 72 Buffett occasionally sounds like a parody of himself and you wonder if he hasn't told that cute anecdote once before.

The big upset is discovering that the most successful capitalist of our time is clearly a bit of a lefty. He is opposed to President Bush's tax cuts on the grounds they will only make people like him even richer.

He rages against Wall Street corruption, executive pay, inheritance tax (way too low), and the notion that successful people deserve what they get for being so hard-working and clever. Buffett says the key factor in his own success, the winning lottery ticket, was being born in America.

If he had been born in Bangladesh his skill for deciphering company accounts would have been worthless and he would, in his words, "have starved to death". Such genuine modesty makes Buffett impossible not to like, unless you happen to have strong feelings about unborn babies.

Buffett contributes to pro choice groups, making him the CEO of abortion to some and a target for protestors. Outside finance, Buffett doesn't like to spout many opinions, saying that "there is something unattractive about a rich guy who just pops off on everything", but sometimes he can't help himself.

Love and money

Omaha is as middle as Middle America can get, which means it is affluent, friendly and dull.

At the weekends you can either play golf or go to a mall; bars close long before anyone can get drunk. Buffett has lived here forever in an unremarkable house he bought for $31,000 that he first shared with his wife, Susie, and that he now shares with his girlfriend, Astrid.

Christmas cards from the Buffett household are signed by all three, though you can assume this is down to rare civility rather than some kind of alternative lifestyle. Although he is worth $36 billion, he has paid himself only $100,000 a year for the past 22 and you suspect he struggles to spend even that. In a nation obsessed with buying things, Buffett hardly buys anything.

One of the nerds, a 13-year-old who really should have been out performing acts of vandalism against phone boxes, asked Buffett about the secret to happiness. As the crowd listened in for a tip on value investing, Buffett said this: "The answer is love. And the only way to be loved is to be loveable.

"I know people with a lot of money who are thrown testimonial dinners, who get their names on buildings, but in truth nobody loves them. Not even the people who put their names on the buildings love them."

The temple of money-making went quiet, and 15,000 people suddenly wondered if they were in the right place.